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A misleading claim about our editorial on drive-by voting

Our editorial today on campaign operatives committing voter fraud by swearing to false statements in their voter affidavits prompted a misleading accusation from Pat Hynes at New Hampshire Journal. Normally I do not respond to such claims, but this one is worth clearing up.

The editorial included this reference to a 2005 incident in which an out-of-state campaign operative voted in a Manchester election: "In 2005, Democratic Manchester Mayor Bob Baines' campaign manager, a young man named Geoff Wetrosky, voted in the city election. He had signed an affidavit saying that he lived in Manchester and intended to stay here. After the election he left. He gave as his 'domicile' the address of Kathy Sullivan, then chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party."

Hynes asked at NH Journal whether we would end Sullivan's column. He said the paper "essentially accuses Democrat honcho Kathy Sullivan of running a voter fraud flop house" and " the Union Leader apparently believes she helped someone commit a crime."

Pat Hynes is a clever guy. It takes quite a bit of cleverness to stretch a few lines explaining Geoff Wetrosky's actions on and after Election Day into not only an accusation that the person Wetrosky was living with ran an illegal flophouse and "helped someone commit a crime," but the additional accusation that this newspaper asserted those things.

It is self-evident that our editorial never asserted any criminal activity on the part of Kathy Sullivan, who now writes a semimonthly column for us, but did not at the time.